Career opportunities in public accounting;

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Career Opportunities in Public Accounting
BY ALEXANDER J. BITKER Principal, San Francisco Office
Presented at the Annual Business Conference of Santa Rosa Junior College, California — May 1958
CAREER opportunities in public accounting have grown continuously during the past fifty years and if this talk were limited to thirty seconds, I would say that opportunities are better today than ever before, with a yet brighter future ahead.
Since you have been kind enough to grant me a little more time, however, I hope to acquaint you with some of the aspects of public accounting that have fascinated me since I made my fortunate choice of a public accounting career years ago. The possibilities should be of interest to those about to embark on a career of their own. Let us then spend a little time talking about —
• What is accounting?
• What are the opportunities?
• What does a CPA do?
• Would you make a good CPA?
• Opportunities for women in public accounting.
• Educational requirements for a career as a CPA.
• Progress and remuneration.
• Alternatives after receiving the CPA certificate.
• Public accounting career opportunities in the future.
WHAT IS ACCOUNTING? Just what is accounting?
Accounting may be described as the art of expressing in clear, understandable financial terms, the results of business transactions. It provides the basic information needed to determine where a busi­ness
has been, where it is now, and—probably most important—where it is going. It replaces hunches with financial facts in making management decisions.
The accounting process is no mere matter of adding up columns of figures. The Babylonian rug weaver of 5,500 years ago could almost keep his accounts in his head and probably the only person who wanted to see them written out in full was his wife. But today even a small business faces many complex problems calling for the services of accountants.
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